In an interview with Econsultancy, GetJar CEO Ilja Laurs talked about his vision for apps and how they will take over the internet. We disagree.

GetJar is the world’s second largest mobile app store founded in Lithuania offering over 57,000 apps for all mobile devices and serving over 55m downloads per month. To date they have achieved over 750m downloads and attracted 300,000 registered developers and 50,000 registered beta testers.

In the interview Laurs’ says that the battle of the app stores will culminate in a dramatic change to the market over the next 12-18 months, and at least 90% of app stores will fail. Further, the importance of global mobile billing will become critical: Several $10M-a-year mobile app businesses will appear in 2010 as the apps market gathers momentum. The billing processes and agreements will improve in 2011 and 2012, stimulating the app economy and the rise of the $100m app businesses.

When asked about whether he thinks that apps market will become bigger than the internet, he said that the internet, as it is today, on the desktop will be eclipsed by the mobile web, and this is most likely to take place by 2020. We do agree, but mobile internet does not mean just apps however bad the browser experience on some phones might currently be. iPhone is leading the way in improving the mobile browser experience and other are catching up fast.

Further, Laurs said that in ten years the time consumer spend on apps versus desktop will be way bigger in terms of mindshare, time, money spent, etc. Already, over half of GetJar users spend more time on the mobile web than via their desktop PC and this is a growing trend.

Yes and no.

We just recently wrote on Morgan Stanley reporting that Mobile IP traffic is likely to grow 66 times by 2013 (with 130% CAGR). By saying that mobile web will overtake the desktop PC doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with apps, and by only looking at how far Google Chrome is pushing the browser I’m convinced we will see big(!) improvements and changes by 2020 – which Laurs used as a tipping point year. Apps make a great business, but the web is, and will be, the ultimate platform. Mobile or not.

4 Responses

In these he gives numbers that illustrate how mobile *dwarfs* regular web internet.
Also, over on Mobile oppertunity, Michael Mace shows why the assumption that there is infinate bandwidth is a myth (http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.com/2009/11/mobile-data-apocalypse-and-what-it.html) and we will soon see the end of the “unlimited” data packages. Carriers/operators will either do like in Finland and offer unlimited bandwidth but different speeds or they will go back to X MByte per month plans and unlimited will disappear.

This points to success for those deveolpers who view the network as a scarce resource.

Also, look at the recent successes reported in Africa and Asia around applicaitons built on top of SMS.